Where is governmental oversight?

Published 7:00 pm, Sunday, September 7, 2008

To the editor:

Two items in Friday’s Courier concern the effect of governmental action on citizens’ finances, and I would like to know where is the governmental oversight with respect to such actions.

First, Jim Doyle’s letter deals with ethanol as fuel for cars. Has anyone considered that ethanol has about half the energy per gallon as gasoline? Has anyone considered that we pay more for ethanol-blended gasoline and yet get only 95 percent of the energy of gasoline (in a 10 percent blend)? This, of course, is mandated by the government, which doesn’t regulate the oil companies. I don’t generally see conspiracy around every corner, but it seems that the exorbitant gas prices and ethanol blended gasoline are just another way the oil companies, with billions in quarterly profits, are getting us used to paying more than what we paid before the blending and exorbitant prices and after any future “roll back” on prices. So where is our governmental oversight?

Second, the front page article by Lucretia Fernandez indicates that the state Legislature is considering a sales tax instead of a property tax to fund schools. Those of us who remember when the sales tax was first enacted, remember that it wasn’t supposed to go over 2 percent and was to be only a short-term solution. Once a tax is enacted, the taxing authorities just can’t help finding more stuff to spend it on. Are we talking about funding universities or just elementary, middle and high schools? If the latter, who monitors the spending decisions of those school districts?

If the Legislature does not, but merely supplies the funding, isn’t that a little like giving your teenager a credit card and not monitoring his purchases? So where is our governmental oversight?

The government won’t listen to an individual citizen, so does anyone have any ideas about how to unite against these failures of oversight? We citizens are already taxed to the limit.